


Three Drinks

by RedRowan



Series: Stars and Horns [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Female Matt Murdock, Foggy/Karen if you squint, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Season/Series 02, Reconciliation, Rule 63, girl! Matt Murdock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7552210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRowan/pseuds/RedRowan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mattie and Foggy slowly try to pick up the pieces of their friendship over drinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coffee

It’s not as easy as a phone call. Foggy doesn’t magically reappear in her life, standing next to her the way he always did. He’s busy, she’s busy, and they can’t even manage to be in the same room for two weeks. But there’s a shift between them. She starts sending him links to articles she thinks he’ll like. He starts sending her jokes from Tumblr. Two weeks after their first phone call, she emails him to ask his opinion about a motion she wants to file on behalf of Steve’s team.

“Why don’t we meet up, you can tell me all about it?” he texts her.

She waits for him in the coffee shop near the clinic, drinking a latte that stings the split in her lip. She’s fifteen minutes early. He’s right on time.

“Hey,” he says, standing in front of her. She can hear the leather of his bag’s strap twisting in his hand, and his heart is beating fast.

“Hey,” she says, and she smiles. He jumps forward and puts his arms around her. It’s quick and awkward, because she’s sitting and he’s standing, and she wishes it could last forever.

“I’m just gonna grab -“ he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the barista.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be here.”

He comes back with a mocha and sits down opposite her. He fiddles with the mug.

“So…how’ve you been?” he says.

“Um…ups and downs?” she says.

“Yeah, uh, you and Steve, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling.

“When did that happen?”

“Uh, New Year’s.”

“Wow. Six months. Is that record for you?”

She laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.”

“Hey, congratulations.” He raises his mug to her. “You doing OK, with the whole…” He waves a hand inarticulately. “Avengers thing?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I mean, it sucks, but I’m fine.”

“Good. Good. So, what’s this motion you wanted to talk about?”

She outlines the motion to have the charges racked up in Leipzig dropped, since, technically, fighting the Avengers is not vigilante activity.

“That’s splitting hairs pretty fine,” Foggy says.

“I can also point out that not all the combatants on Tony’s side were signatories of the Accords.” Like, say, Peter and T’Challa. “And even with the Accords, the Avengers aren’t clearly defined either as a law-enforcement agency or a paramilitary organization. I mean, Tony can’t prosecute _me_ under the Accords for punching him in the face just because he’s Iron Man.”

“You punched Tony Stark?”

“…Yeah.”

“If I ask why, will I regret it?”

“He put a friend of mine in danger.”

Foggy nods.

“Honestly, I think you’ll have a better chance getting the charges dropped because of the violation of due process,” he says. “That’s where the Accords are the most vulnerable.”

“The implementation, maybe, but not the Accords themselves.”

“And you want to go after the Accords.” He takes a sip of mocha. “I don’t know why I’m even surprised.”

She grins. “I don’t know why either.”

He chuckles.

“I think the only way you can pull this off is if you can convince someone on the other side to agree with your interpretation. Who’s on their legal team?”

“I think the UN gave them some lawyers, but…” She trails off.

“What?”

“Think if I could get an Avenger on my side, it would work?”

“I thought you punched Tony.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “He tried to recruit me two weeks later, I don’t think he has any hard feelings. And he’s…I think he’s in a weird place right now. I mean, he talked to Karen about the Raft, he clearly wasn’t happy about it.”

Foggy shrugs. “I just - oh, you know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Yeah, it could work. It’s not as airtight as having one of their legal team, but…”

“But if there’s anyone from the Avengers they’ll listen to, it’s Tony Stark.”

“If you can get him on side. It’s a big if.”

“I know. But it’s a good shot.”

“Yeah, I think it is.”

“Thanks, Foggy,” she says, reaching out and brushing her hand against his wrist. He takes her hand, the way he used to so many times, and squeezes it.

“Any time,” he says, and he means it.

“So, tell me about HC&B.”

He spends about five minutes telling her about his new job before his phone rings and he has to go. He gives her a one-armed hug while holding his phone to his ear, and then he’s gone.

She already misses him before the door closes.


	2. Beer

Her meeting with Tony is late in the afternoon, so she’s not planning on going back to the office. She stands on the sidewalk next to Grand Central, and remembers having dinner with Steve at the Oyster Bar. She remembers sitting in the Tower’s common room that night, listening to Steve tell stories about Bucky, stories that would probably make her laugh even harder now that she knows the man. Or might break her heart, hearing how he used to be.

She remembers Steve getting caught in the common room in his underwear by Tony and Bruce, and realizes that she’s never told Steve that she’d heard every word. _He’s probably figured it out by now._

And she misses Steve, and she doesn’t want to go home to her empty apartment right now, so she pulls out her phone.

“Hey, Mattie,” Foggy says.

“Hey, you got any plans for the rest of the day?”

“Uh, strangely enough, no. Why?”

“Want to grab a beer?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Yeah. Uh, give me about half an hour to finish up here?”

“Sure. Meet at…” She doesn’t know where they should go. She can’t say Josie’s. “Do you know a good place?”

“Yeah, there’s a pub on 54th and 9th, it’s pretty good. Just follow the smell of craft beer and hipsters.”

“Will do. I’ll see you there.”

She’s just debating whether to walk or take a cab when her phone rings with “Wakandan Mission.”

“Matilda Murdock.”

“Mattie, it’s Nombeko from the Wakandan Permanent Mission.” Nombeko is the receptionist at the Permanent Mission, and sees a lot of Mattie.

“Hi, Nombeko, how are you?”

“Very well, thank you. I just wanted to let you know that a package arrived here for you this afternoon.”

“Thanks, are you going to be there for the next half hour?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll swing by to get it.”

She grabs a cab to take her to the Mission, then to the pub. The package is a small box tightly wrapped in paper, and she doesn’t have enough time to open it before the cab is pulling up in front of the pub.

Foggy is waiting for her at a table, and guides her to her seat.

“What’ve you got there?”

“Package from the Wakandan Permanent Mission.”

“What were you doing there?” 

“I’m their lawyer,” she says as she starts to unwrap the package.

“How’d you land that gig?”

“The King of Wakanda asked me?” She’s got the wrapping off, and she finds the seams in the cardboard box. Inside is wadded-up tissue paper, and she can sense something denser underneath.

“ _When_ did you meet the King of Wakanda?”

“When I was there?” she says, dropping her voice. “With Steve.”

“Oh. Is this…you know…”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“OK.”

She has the tissue paper out of the box, and pulls out a perfect origami rose. Wrapped around the stem is a tag with braille lettering saying “Love, from Japan.” She swallows around the lump in her throat.

“Is…that from…” Foggy starts.

“Yeah.”

“Guy’s making the rest of us look bad.”

“Yeah, you twenty-first century guys need to get your act together.” She puts the rose back in the box and gently places the tissue paper over it. A waitress comes to take their order, and Mattie says she’ll have whatever Foggy’s drinking.

“So…” Foggy says as the waitress walks away. “Steve.”

“Yes.”

“How’s…guess you guys are making it work?”

She shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, it’s not ideal, but -“

“It’s worth it.”

“Yeah.”

“So how are you guys managing?”

She grins. “I can’t tell you that, because you _might_ have to testify against me if things go south.”

He pauses.

“Get this round, and I’m your lawyer,” he says.

“Your hourly’s gone down,” she says with a grin.

“Friends and family discount.”

_Are we friends?_

“Deal.”

“So?”

“Hold on.” She can hear the waitress coming over with their beers, and she waits until the beers are on the table and the waitress has walked away before continuing. “Mostly, we just talk on the phone. He sent me a burner when I got back from Wakanda, we talk every couple of days.”

“Wakanda? OK, you’ve got to back it up a bit.”

She tells him about the Raft (in as vague terms as possible) and the week in Wakanda, and T’Challa’s help. She doesn’t tell him that Bucky is still there, in cryogenic stasis, because that’s Steve’s secret, not hers. She keeps her voice low, and listens to the people around them, but no-one is paying them any attention.

“How long’s it been since you’ve seen him?” Foggy says. “Not literally, obviously.”

“‘Bout a month.”

“You miss him?”

“Of course I do.”

Foggy takes a sip of beer. “So what’s he like? As a boyfriend.”

She lets out a breath. “I don’t know - great? Just as good as you’d expect?”

“So, the perfect specimen of American manhood.”

“Well…actually, no, I’m not going to argue with that assessment.” They laugh together, like they used to. “He…he makes you want to be better than you are. He makes you believe you _can_ be.”

Foggy is silent for a moment.

“You know, Karen was right,” he says. “He’s good for you.”

“She said that?”

“Yeah. She’s kind of invested in your relationship.”

“She was trying to get me to give an interview about it.”

Foggy snorts into his beer. “Yeah, that’s because there are a _lot_ of people who want to hear about who Steve Rogers is screwing.”

Mattie shakes her head as she takes another drink.

“I sent Karen a message I got the day after her article went up,” she says. “It was from a porn website that wanted me to talk about having sex with Steve.”

“Not surprised. I mean, you do know that there’s fanfic porn of you and Steve out there, right?”

Mattie barely keeps the beer from spouting out of her nose.

“What?”

“So you didn’t know?” He’s trying to sound innocent, and his heart is beating like a liar.

“Of course I didn’t!”

“Well most of it’s not about you, not you-you, but there’s a lot with…other you…and Captain America. People ship you. Turns out, accurately.”

“Oh, God.” She nearly bangs her head against the table. “Wait,” she says suspiciously, “how do _you_ know about this?”

“Karen was doing research!”

“Foggy,” she says, her voice dropping dangerously close to her Daredevil registers.

“And I may have read… one or two…”

“You’re lying.”

“…series…”

“Oh, my God.” Her forehead meets the table. _Bucky is going to laugh his ass off when he finds out about this. So would_ \- “Never tell Sam about this.”

And that shuts both of them up, because God knows when Foggy will ever have a chance to talk to Sam Wilson again.

“Huh. He owes me a pool rematch,” says Foggy.

“Yeah. He does.”

They both drink.

“Tell him hi for me? I mean, next time you talk to him.”

“I will.”

They’re finished the round, and Mattie needs to go out tonight, so she pays the waitress, and Foggy walks her out. He flags down a cab for her, and when it pulls up, he stands there with his hand on her arm.

“We should do this again,” he says. He’s not lying.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’d like that.”


	3. Whiskey

Celebration drinks have turned into a full-on all-staff party in the office. The medical staff have closed up for the day, and have joined Mattie, Becky and Kirsten in the legal offices; Jen Walters is on her way over from her regular job, and Mattie feels almost as powerful as she did when she took down Wilson Fisk. She makes the three calls to Clint, Scott, and Steve, and delivers the good news: the Leipzig charges have been dropped. Clint, Scott, Wanda and Natasha are no longer wanted fugitives.

“What about Sam?” Steve says.

“They’re still charging him with the stuff from Bucharest,” she says. “They’re not budging on those, I’m sorry, sweetheart -“

“No, it’s great, it’s amazing.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “You’re amazing.”

“Uh, there’s some bad news, though. Wanda and Natasha’s US visas have been revoked. I’m pretty sure it’s just Ross being an asshole, but…”

“Yeah, I get it. I’ll let them know.”

“We’ll work something out. Just…one problem at a time, right?”

“Yeah. I miss you.”

“Miss you too.”

Two hours later, Mattie and Claire are debating whether they should buy pizzas or beer or both when Mattie’s phone announces, “Foggy. Foggy. Foggy.”

“Hey, Karen told me the news!” he says, sounding delighted on the other end. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks!” she says, her voice loud over the music that Linda put on. She ducks into her office for a little more quiet.

“You sound like you’re having a good time.”

“We’re having a bit of a party. You should come over, we’re going to order pizza. Bring Karen.”

“Karen’s working on a story, so, yes! I will come over. Want me to bring anything?”   


“A few more beers, and we’ll love you forever.”

“Deal.”

Foggy shows up with two six-packs just after the pizzas arrive, and is promptly embraced by the Storefront’s staff. While they’re eating, Mattie overhears Claire say to him in a low voice, “It’s good to see you around. She’s missed you.”

Mattie doesn’t get to talk to Foggy much, he’s too busy meeting new people and being genuinely interested in them. But since it’s a Thursday, everyone starts to pack up and go home once the pizza and beers are gone, and Foggy is still there while Mattie and Claire lock up the offices.

“Do you want us to walk you home?” Foggy says to Claire. “I mean, I hear these streets can be dangerous.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m OK,” Claire says. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mattie.”

“Bye, Claire,” Mattie says.

As Claire walks away, Foggy reaches out and wraps Mattie’s hand around his arm, the way he’s done countless times. Without thinking, she leans into him, savoring the fact that he’s _here_ , his smell, his heartbeat, and she’s _missed_ him.

“Where to? You’re not going to go out like this, are you?”

“No,” she says, laughing. “I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.” She can’t stop smiling. “Don’t want to go home just yet, though.”

She’s thinking they could find a bar, maybe even brave the ghosts at Josie’s, but mostly she just doesn’t want to let go of his arm.

“Hey, you want to see the new place?” he says. “It’s just up on 48th, and I _definitely_ have more libations at home.”

“Mmm,” she says, throwing her head back with a smile. “Yes, that sounds great.”

Foggy’s new place is a condo in a new high-rise (and isn’t _that_ ironic). Mattie stumbles a bit when he leads her around the living room and kitchen, letting her brush her hands over the furniture, trying to put together an image in her head. Leather couch, butter-soft. Thick rugs over hardwood floors. Cool stone countertops. All the markings of wealth and class. All the things she could never offer him.

“Whiskey for the lady?” he says, holding out a glass. She can smell it, rich and expensive.

“Dare I ask?” she says, thinking of the price.

“Twenty-year-old. Client gave it to me.” He holds his glass out, and she clinks hers against his. They drink, and she sits on the couch as he settles himself in a chair.  


 “This is…really fucking good,” she says, and then she’s giggling because she’s drunk and high on victory.

“Hey, you deserve it. I saw that you got Tony to testify.”

“He clinched it,” she says with a satisfied smirk. “Hate to admit it, but I owe him this one.”

“Does Steve know?”

“Yeah. I told him a few weeks ago.”

“How’d that go over?”

“He’s…the whole thing with him and Tony’s just…complicated right now. I mean, he’s _glad_ the charges got dropped -“

“ _You_ got the charges dropped.”

“Yeah. But…oh, God, sometimes I wish I could just lock the two of them in a room and not let them out until they actually talk to each other.”

“Well, you know, Tony just did you a solid, so maybe you can convince Steve to reach out…?”

“Mm,” she hums, shaking her head and waving her glass, “Steve tried that. He sent Tony a burner just before we went to the Raft, and Tony’s pretty much said he’ll never use it.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, that was a little while ago, and Tony was probably still, you know, pissed off at Steve for everything that went down, but he’s probably had time to cool off, and think about everything, and, I mean, he’s obviously willing to help the rest of you…”

“Yeah, but the stuff with Steve…”

“More than the Accords?”

“It’s…personal stuff. Steve found out something a long time ago about Tony’s parents, and it came out in the worst way when they were in Siberia. I mean, I _know_ why Steve didn’t tell him, but Tony blames him for a lot of it, and I’m not sure that he’ll ever forgive him.”

“Has Steve tried, dunno, apologizing?”

“Sort of. Thing is, I’m not sure Steve would do it differently, given the choice.”

“Maybe Tony’s right to be mad, then.”

“Yeah, maybe he is. You know, I don’t think Steve would disagree, either. But, I know that…even if Steve doesn’t regret his choices, he…regrets how it all played out, and - and that there doesn’t seem to be any way past it.”

Foggy takes a sip of whiskey. “They’ll figure out a way. Eventually,” he says, his voice soft. “I think…I think they both just wanted what was best for the Avengers, right? They were just coming at it from different angles.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “And I don’t think either of them meant to tear everything apart the way that it did.”

Her glass is empty. Foggy pours her another one.

“You know,” he says, his tone deliberately lighter, “locking them together in a closet is actually a fan fiction trope.”

“Oh, God. Let me guess - sex ensues?”

“That’s a safe bet for any fan fiction trope. I’m sure I can find you some Cap/Iron Man ones…”

“Oh, God, no, please! I do _not_ want to think about my boyfriend fucking Tony Stark!”

“What, you don’t think Tony’s never thought about it?”

She pauses. “No, he probably has. He probably thinks about it with everyone.”

“So…were you ever tempted?”

“What, by Tony?”

There’s a rustle of fabric as he shrugs. “He’s got quite a reputation. And a few sex tapes floating around, I’m pretty sure.”

“Uh, no. No, I was never tempted.” She takes a drink, then points at him accusingly. “You’re trying to remember if there’s a Cap/Iron Man/Daredevil fic, aren’t you?”

“Pretty sure it exists somewhere online.”

She throws a cushion at him, laughing, and he just throws it right back at her. She leans back, putting her feet up on the seat, and feels warm and safe. When she finishes her drink, Foggy insists that she stay the night, so she kicks off her shoes and stretches out on the couch. He drapes a blanket over her before heading to his bedroom.

She doesn’t say, _I’m sorry_.

He doesn’t say, _I forgive you_.

They hear it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Just a short little interlude in the Stars & Horns 'verse, since my brain wouldn't let it go. This was something that I didn't want to put in the background of a bigger story, so it came together in little snippets instead. Thanks for reading!


End file.
